


Coping

by nekocrouton



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Brotherly Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Men Crying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 20:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12261147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nekocrouton/pseuds/nekocrouton
Summary: Every year on the anniversary of Sam's death, Nate has a tradition.  But he's still not over it.  And he probably won't ever be.





	Coping

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I'm not sure what possessed me to write this, I guess I was just feeling some angst? It's also more of a narrative rather than a story, so I guess I was just trying something new here. But I figured I might as well put it out there.

It was that time of year again.  The time that Nathan always dreaded with a heavy heart.  Whenever he looked at the calendar and saw that the days were getting closer to that one particular day, he only grew more apprehensive and moody as time wore on.  Sully was the only one who also knew about the one day a year that would end up throwing him into a deep depression, and he could tell that day was getting closer with how irritable he got and how his mood would darken.  Sully would always give him the space he needed though, he knew that it was something that he needed to work through.  But it never got easier no matter how much time had passed.

 

Before the day finally came around, Nathan would prepare by making sure that he had a bottle of hard liquor in his apartment.  Usually a particular brand of whiskey or scotch.  It helped to numb the pain that he knew he was going to experience.  Every year he hoped that it wouldn’t hurt as much as it did, but every year it felt like the hole in his heart only got bigger.  That saying, _“Time heals all wounds,”_ was a bunch of crap as far as he was concerned.

 

Once the dreaded day had arrived, Nathan always found it hard to get out of bed.  There was zero motivation to, with what the day meant to him.  He always hoped that he could just sleep through the entirety of the day, but his body would never obey him.  So he would end up lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling and just reliving the horrible memory.  The memory of the day when he lost his big brother.  Sometimes he lay there devoid of emotion, an empty husk of a human being as he recalled the awful events, and sometimes he curled up into a ball and bawled his eyes out, sobs wracking his chest and his body as he mourned the only family that he had, and how he just slipped from his fingertips to his death.  Nathan always blamed himself for Sam’s death, thinking how if he had only been stronger to hold up his dead weight, or if he had let Sam jump first instead of him.  Maybe he would have ended up dead instead of Sam.  That was a sacrifice he would have been willing to make, if it meant that Sam lived.  But instead his big brother was gone, never to come back, and he was left with all of the regrets and sadness manifesting as a weight on his shoulders that he’d never be able shake off.  Sure, he had done some things in his life that the average person just wouldn’t be able to accomplish, but all of the amazing archeological finds in the _world_ couldn’t fill the ever growing, gaping hole in his heart.  All he wanted was his big brother back, his _family_ back, but sadly, it just wasn’t going to happen.

 

Eventually once he’d had enough of tossing and turning in bed, Nathan would get up.  If he was feeling up to it, he’d take a shower, but most of the time he’d just throw on his clothes, dressing in something comfortable like a t-shirt and sweatpants.  Something that didn’t require much effort to put on.  He usually didn’t bother with breakfast or any sort of morning snack, or an afternoon snack if he didn’t roll out of bed until later in the day.  Nathan typically went straight for the alcohol to drink his sorrows away.  He’d take the bottle, a brand of booze that Sam preferred when he was alive, accompanied by a shot glass and he’d go sit down in the living room with them.  Plopping the bottle and glass on the coffee table in front of him, he’d crack the alcohol open and pour some of the amber liquid out into the shot glass.  Nathan usually didn’t waste any time in tipping back the glass between his lips, wanting to get to the brain numbing effects of the alcohol as soon as possible.

 

As the alcohol burned down his throat, he’d remember the good times he’d had while Sam was alive, drinking in bars across towns and cities in America and the various other countries they’d visited, staying overnight wherever they could afford to stay, and if cash was low, they’d either crash on couches of people who’d let them, or they’d have to resort to sleeping in dark alleyways or under bridges.  But even though they didn’t have a lot of material things, they had each other, and that was all that mattered.

 

Nathan would usually keep the alcohol flowing, pouring out another shot or two and downing them, although at some point he’d manage to pull out the book that held the last of his mother’s, _their mother’s_ , life work.  Life work that would never be seen to completion.  As much as he’d have loved to pursue what their mother had been chasing after, it just didn’t feel right to do it without Sam.  The journal also held one of the few pictures he had of him and his brother.  He’d often stare at it as the alcohol started to make his mind fuzzy, and he’d get that feeling that everything was just a bad dream again.  Maybe Sam wasn’t dead, maybe he was alive somewhere, maybe he actually _survived_?  But despite his buzz, the reality would eventually hit him like a ton of bricks, reopening the wound all over again.  Sam Drake was _dead_ , and there was _nothing_ he could do about it.  If his brother wasn’t dead, he would have tried to contact him somehow, he would have made his way to him and would have done _anything_ to do so.  But Sam wasn’t there.  And he wouldn’t _ever_ be there, ever again. 

 

That was when the tears would start up again, and in order to stem them, Nathan would drink more of the booze from his shot glass.  He’d keep tipping the shots back until either the tears eventually dried up, or he’d pass out on the couch.  Usually it was the couch that would win, and he’d lay there unconscious until the next day.

 

Once he’d woken up, hungover and eyes burning from crying on and off, he’d usually stumble towards the bathroom to take a piss and to down some aspirin to quell his pounding headache.  Nathan would then usually strip himself of his clothes and take a shower in order to cleanse himself and make himself feel like a _human_ again.  He’d stand there, letting the water cascade over him and wash the sadness away.  Once he’d had enough of the shower, he’d get out, dry off and wrap a towel around his waist before stepping back into the living room.  Nathan would make sure to put away the journal before doing anything else, almost as closure for the day of mourning he’d just experienced.  And then he would go on to live his day just like all of his other days, until the time came again for him to partake in the tradition.  A tradition that he’d sadly take part in for fifteen long years, until that one fateful day when he could finally _stop._


End file.
